


Éponine's Intervention

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Eponine Survives, Bad Parenting, Canon Era, Canonical Child Abuse, F/F, Girl Montparnasse, Missing Scene, Rescue, Rescuers in need of rescue, Éponine in Action
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9263351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Things might be the way they are, but none of it is Cosette's fault.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Missy, from someone who intersects with you on Les Mis as well as Springsteen ;)
> 
> (TW for references to canonical child labour and abuse.)

Maman always shouts at Cosette -- _so lazy! so ugly! always slacking off!_ \-- so that's what Éponine knows to do as well. It makes Maman chuckle approvingly and Azelma clap her hands in glee. 

Éponine hopes Cosette understands she doesn't mean it, because those things aren't true. Cosette is pretty to her, though no one else thinks so, her heart-shaped face so much like the doll Éponine once saw in the window of the Duvals' shop in the town square. Cosette works hard, too -- she gets up at dawn and fetches and carries without complaint; her little body is much stronger than it looks.

Éponine knows how to pretend, but when Maman isn't looking, Éponine helps Cosette with the buckets and the washing. On Tuesdays when Maman goes to the market, Éponine sweeps the front stoop of the inn although that isn't her job, and lets Cosette play with her doll.

Cosette isn't allowed to eat with them, but after supper sometimes Éponine sneaks down to the place on the hearth where Cosette sleeps to bring her an apple or a roll of bread. 

"You'll get into trouble," Cosette murmurs, once, when they are a little older and old enough to understand why things are the way they are, with Éponine in her nice dresses and Cosette in her rags.

Éponine sniffs. "Never! Anyway, I'm not afraid," she says, even though of course she is, of course she knows if Maman catches her at it there'll be a smack for her as well and more besides.

"Nothing scares you," Cosette tells Éponine admiringly and presses her hand, and Éponine feels her heart grow two sizes bigger. 

Things might be the way they are, but none of it is Cosette's fault.

Sometimes after everyone has turned in for the night, Éponine sneaks out of the room she shares with Azelma and tiptoes through the darkened inn to the fireplace. 

"Make room for me," Éponine says, and Cosette moves over. 

The rug Cosette sleeps on is rough and doesn't keep out the cold of the flagstones underneath, but Cosette's skin against hers is petal-soft. 

Éponine huddles close and tells Cosette stories she's heard, of princesses and paupers switched at birth, of daughters ill-treated by wicked stepmothers, and handsome princes who come eventually to their rescue. Her tales make Cosette smile, but they're just stories, after all, daydreams that aren't real. By now, the girls are old enough to know the world doesn't work that way.

Then one day the stories come true after all. A handsome prince arrives at the inn, carrying a pretty doll and wearing a gentle smile, like the stories say. 

But he only rescues one of them. 

He doesn't see beyond Éponine's pretences, and he leaves Éponine behind, to the inn and her parents and her memories of the girl whom she couldn't protect.

Éponine tries very hard not to be jealous. She's less successful at convincing herself she doesn't mind being alone. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


After Montfermeil, the quiet walls of Petit-Picpus are like the fortifications of a castle. 

Cosette knows herself safe, knows herself nurtured by the sisters, knows herself loved by the good man who came to her in her mother's place. Grateful for her Heavenly Father's mercy, for her earthly father's tender care, she grows like a flower toward the light.

Of her time in the inn -- the scrubbing of floors and fetching of water and of going barefoot in the winter, wearing fear as she wore her tattered rags, her only respite from misery those few stolen moments at Éponine's side -- she only remembers this in snatches, in shadows, that are easily dispelled by the sun of her present happiness.

If she finds herself dreaming of a soft voice telling her stories in the dark, finds herself searching the faces of her classmates for brown eyes that are both fierce and kind, what of it? Young girls grow up imagining love in far stranger places.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Éponine grows up too. Deprived of gratitude or care or anyone's mercy, she is thinner than she ought to be, as wan as any bloom that grows into maturity with too little light.

Her family loses the inn and is forced to take to the city. They move from abode to abode, sometimes living in the doorways of houses and under the arches of bridges even in the winter, and there's never enough to eat. 

To get away from them, Éponine takes to walking by herself at night through the restless streets of Paris. 

One evening she sees Cosette standing by the gold-topped gates of the Luxembourg Gardens, fair curls bright as the sun. Her heart leaps up, and she raises a hand to call to her childhood playmate, but after a moment she realises it's a just waking dream brought on by too little food.

After that, Éponine knows nobody's coming to her rescue. She knows she has to make her way for herself. 

She puts on a boy's clothes because she can't climb into people's houses and run from the police in skirts. She follows her father and then the gang which her father has joined as they prowl the underbelly of Paris, and she learns their ways. She learns to tuck a knife into her boot; it may not be right to hurt someone with it, but she means to survive any way she can.

There's a woman in the gang who dresses like a man and calls herself by a man's name, and spends her nights with women who are fooled by her man's guise. Éponine isn't fooled; she wouldn't pass the time with any man, but Montparnasse smells like sunlight and makes her forget how lonely she is. Éponine's old enough now to take comfort where she can -- she knows love is a luxury that isn't for the likes of her.

  
  
  


The day starts out as a day like any other. Revolutionary fever has gripped the city, as deadly as the cholera epidemic only months before. Students swarm the streets of Paris, distributing pamphlets and making speeches calling for the people to rise up against the upper classes that exploit the poor. 

Her brother, Gavroche, has started following the students as they visit the impoverished neighbourhoods. Éponine hopes it'll at least keep the kid out of trouble.

Today the gang's running one of their usual long cons, fleecing some rich bourgeois of money he'll just earn back soon enough. She's tasked to stand lookout as her father escorts the mark into the gang's trap and her mother baits it with somebody's borrowed baby, the others lying in wait in the shadows.

All's going to plan until Marius Pontmercy, the boy who lives in the apartment next to theirs, happens to walk into the street carrying a stack of revolutionary pamphlets. Éponine leaves her position in order to intercept him before he wanders into the crossfire and hurts himself.

Rushing back to her post, she comes right up against the mark: an older gentleman with silver hair, accompanied by a young girl carrying a basket, dressed in blue.

Éponine's elbow accidentally jostles the girl's, and she drops her basket. Baked goods and apples roll out into the street. They both get to their knees to retrieve the fallen items.

"I didn't see you there; forgive me," Éponine begins, and looks up into Cosette's blue eyes.

The doll-like face has become a woman's, the golden hair now tended and carefully pinned up, the once-malnourished body grown strong and shapely under the fashionable silk dress. But she would have known Cosette anywhere in the world. 

For a moment she can't breathe. She's frozen to the spot with love.

Cosette's eyes widen. Improbably, she recognises Éponine as well.

"Come right this way, Monsieur." Her father intervenes, quick as a snake, taking Cosette's older companion by the arm and helping him assist Cosette to her feet.

As he leads the pair down into the street, Cosette still looking behind her as if she can't believe her eyes, Éponine realises what is about to happen. She realises that the gallant rescuer of yesteryear, as well as the maiden he saved, are now both depending on her.

She gets up, and takes a deep breath.

"Police!" She knows how to make her scream carry. "Disappear! Run for it! _The cognes are here!"_

They weren't, of course, but they are now. She can see police uniforms at the top of the street, and when she screams, they break into a run.

A dour figure in a hat and long great-coat follows them at speed. She's in luck -- it's Javert!

They ignore her as they run past: one scruffy boy in the street, cap jammed over his messy hair, hardly worth anyone's attention.

Javert and his men lay about the ruffians with their nightsticks, and in no time they have the gang dead to rights. While all this is going on, Éponine sees Cosette and her rescuer quietly slip away. She isn't sure why they do that, but it seems Cosette has a secret, and anyway nobody in their right mind would want to stick around to be questioned by the police.

Cosette pauses for a moment before she's led quickly away, and in that moment she casts a look down the street at Éponine and raises her hand.

 _I remember: nothing scares you_ , the look says. _Find me_.

Éponine grins to herself. Her heart is beating like the wings of a caged bird. This rescuing kick is proving to be addictive. Maybe she was never meant to be a criminal; maybe she really belongs on the side of the light.

Cosette wants to see her again. She knows she can't hope for love, but maybe there'll be forgiveness. Or maybe Cosette will tell her there's nothing to forgive; they were so young, she couldn't've protected anyone.

This time it's different. This time she can actually help Cosette, same way as she's managed to save herself, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Miss M for the speedy beta! 
> 
> This story is mostly musical-based (Cosette's blondeness, and the possibility of a covert childhood friendship, which the Brick doesn't allow for), though it incorporates elements from the book (Azelma, as well as _"the cognes are here"_ , which Brick-Éponine writes when she's demonstrating her penmanship to Marius, and which note Marius uses to distract Patron-Minette in the Gorbeau House scene).
> 
> Title echoes Act I's _The Robbery (Javert's Intervention)_ , except it's not Javert's intervention that is critical here ;)


End file.
